Carta Operum

Journal ◆ Sync

Where is my bus?

Putting a moving coach on a map without making the traveler wait for it.

After the ticket, the question every traveler asks is where the bus is. TicketBus365 answers with a live map: the coach as a marker, the route as a line and the stops as dots, so the answer is also an estimate of how long you can stay in the cafe.

The marker is the easy part to draw and the hard part to keep honest. Positions arrive at their own pace, sometimes late and sometimes in a burst, so the app never jumps the marker to the newest point. It moves toward the latest fix over a second or so, and when no fix arrives for a while it says so instead of pretending the bus is still moving.

I also want the map to cost nothing when it is not open. The app subscribes when the screen appears and lets go when it disappears, and a ticket that is not about to depart does not track at all. A traveler with six saved tickets should not be paying for six live connections.